


Crayola

by FidotheFinch



Category: Maximum Ride - James Patterson
Genre: Fluff, Gen, PTSD implied, Panic Attack, Sibling Bonding, angsty Iggy, but I promise it's cute, mentions skinning animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 14:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9495503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FidotheFinch/pseuds/FidotheFinch
Summary: Angel steals a box of crayons and proudly shows her work to her eldest siblings. But only one of them sees it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place at the E-shaped house before Jeb left, so Angel is very young.

Angel had to stand on her tiptoes to reach the box of crayons. Her fledgling wings flapped ineffectually with her effort, but she jumped a little bit and her small fingers brushed the box, and then she could drag it across the table. She beamed at the pack of colored wax. Jeb had gotten them for training – a crayon can burn for almost half an hour in an emergency – but Angel saw Fang coloring with them. He used the colors to make a picture of Max. It was really pretty.

She wanted to try.

Almost bouncing with giddiness, she scurried back to her room, where she had already stashed paper from Jeb's printer. She made sure Nudge wasn't in her bed – she wasn't; everybody else was outside learning how to skin bunnies – before she threw the box on her own bed, ahead of herself.

With crayons in hand, she drew her first masterpiece.

**~xXx~**

"Max! Look! Look what I drawed!" Max looked up from her journal, where Jeb had sent her to write through the panic attack she'd experienced when she saw Fang twisting a rabbit's neck. Angel's small feet pattered outside her doorway, and Max shoved the journal into her desk drawer before she saw. It was private; the last thing she wanted was for Angel to ask her to read it to her.

She shot through the door without knocking, a piece of paper covered in scribbles held proudly in front of her. Max lifted her into her lap and rested her chin on Angel's soft curls. "What's this?"

Angel shook the paper. "A picture! I drawed it! Like Fang!"

Max's brow creased. She let the grammar slide in her confusion. "Fang draws?"

"Uh-huh."

"What does he draw?"

"You." Angel smiled up at Max. "It was really pretty."

". . . oh." Max blushed, and decided to direct attention away from herself. "What did you draw?"

"Guess."

Max looked at the squiggles on the page. It was difficult to see anything past a sea of wavy blue and pink lines. But. . . there were vaguely circular shapes, each with a loop and four lines coming out of them. Suns, maybe? "Is it. . . space?"

Angel sighed in disappointment and climbed out of Max's lap. "No," was all she said before leaving, picture clenched in her hand.

**~xXx~**

Angel started to open Fang's door, then remembered that she was supposed to knock first. Jeb said that if Angel didn't knock Fang would hide from her inside the room, but Max told her that sometimes Fang forgot that they were safe and would get really scared or angry if she surprised him. So Angel hastily slapped her hand against the door like a knock as she pushed it open. "Fang?"

He was lying on the floor, staring at the ceilings like he could burn holes through it. Angel wondered if the whitecoats made somebody that could. He rolled onto his side when he heard her come in, so that he was facing her. His face softened into a soft smile. Without a word, he lifted his arm, and Angel crawled under and laid next to him.

Angel thought Fang gave the best hugs. And she was only a little bit biased, because she was the only one who Fang would hug. He pulled her closer and gave her a half-hug with one arm. He didn't talk a lot, but sometimes he let Angel in to read his mind.

_What's that?_

"It's a picture. I drawed-"

_Drew._

"-drew it."

_Hmm._

"Like you."

 _Oh?_ Images of pencils and paper and notebooks and crayons and colors flashed through his mind. And sketches. Angel couldn't keep up or understand all of them, but she recognized Max in a lot of them.

She could tell Fang didn't know that she had seen him draw. It worried him. "I'm sorry."

His big dark eyes blinked. _Why?_

"I didn't mean to scare you."

 _Darkness, glowing eyes, somebody is watching, cold cages—_ his mind closed off suddenly. He began running his fingers through her downy wings. "You didn't," he whispered out loud.

"Okay." Angel fiddled with the corner of her picture. She would ask Jeb why he lied later. "Do you like it?"

"Yes." And he pulled her closer and hugged her again.

Angel hid her face against his chest. "Is it good?"

His hand on her back stilled. "Yes." Another beat of hesitation. _I can teach you, if you want._

Angel looked up at him. He wasn't smiling, but his eyes were honest. If he taught her, then maybe he would understand what she had drawn. She nodded.

"FANG!" He tensed, tucking Angel into his chest defensively. Angel didn't understand why; it was only Nudge.

"SPIDER! HELP!"

Fang relaxed. Angel caught him rolling his eyes as he climbed to his feet. _Later_ , _alligator_.

"After while, crocodile," she giggled as he walked out the door.

**~xXx~**

Iggy fumbled with the knife in his hands and held back a curse. He had heard Angel walking around earlier, and the last thing he wanted was to be responsible for her future language. So he focused again on steadying his hands and trying to chop another very spherical onion.

The training hadn't gone well today, to say the least. Barely an hour into it, Jeb had dismissed everyone so they could "decompress." For Iggy, that meant cooking. He suspected Max and Fang had specific instructions for what to do, but Jeb had yet to help Iggy find an effective method that was considered safe or, you know, _possible_ for a blink kid.

Iggy's hands were shaking. He used his sense of touch to get around the kitchen when he was cooking, but right now his hands weren't cooperating. He couldn't feel anything, couldn't focus, couldn't—he took a deep breath. His hands steadied enough he could get his bearings again. Carefully, he aligned his blade with the onion. Applied pressure, and -

"Iggy?" He startled, his hand slipped, and in the process of saving his fingers, he knocked the onion off the counter. He couldn't focus enough to hear where it went. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

He took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. "No, Angel, it's okay. I'm just a little bit jumpy right now." He set the knife down on the counter. "Can you help me find the onion? I think it rolled somewhere?"

"Yeah!" A few steps to Iggy's right. "Here it is!"

Iggy coughed awkwardly. He loved Angel, but she wasn't easy for him to interact with. She knew he was blind, but didn't seem to really understand it, or else forgot altogether. Like now. He slowly waved it through the air where he thought he heard her voice come from. Couldn't find anything. So he put his hand out, palm up, instead. "Could you give it to me, please?"

The onion fell into his hand from somewhere to his right, Angel's tiny fingers brushing his wrist. "Thanks." He skimmed his fingers gently along the counter to his left until he found the cutting board and carefully placed the onion so that it wouldn't roll away again. His hands were still shaking too hard though, so he sighed and put the knife down. Angel's breath picked up.

He stiffened when her arms wrapped as far as they could around his waist. "Don't be sad. I drawed – drew you a picture."

Iggy's breath caught in his throat. "Yeah?" was all he managed to choke out. And when he listened, he could hear the crinkle of paper behind him, probably clutched in one of Angel's hands.

But he couldn't see it.

"Angel, I. . . " He didn't know what to say. Angel released him, pried open one of his shaking fists, and closed it around a wrinkly rectangle coated in a thin layer of what felt like wax. Crayons? "Thanks."

He smoothed it out the best he could. Should he pretend to look at it? Would she even know the difference? Before he could make a decision, Angel took him by the shirtsleeve and dragged him out of the kitchen. He almost stumbled, but caught himself on the doorjamb on the way into the living room. When they arrived, she pulled him onto the floor and crawled into his lap. "See? Here's you, and that's Gazzy, and there's Nudge and Max and Fang. And that's me!"

Iggy didn't need much prompting to imagine his family, even if he knew that what he pictured probably wasn't what they had looked like for years. Heck, he'd never even seen Angel. He always just pictured a younger, more feminine Gazzy. He wasn't sure what to do with the information though, before he felt Angel softly taking his fingers and guiding them over the page.

She continued explaining. "All of the white spots-" here she tapped his fingers across the top "- are stars. Except I made one red because Jeb said that it was actually a planet that was red. And the sky is pink and yellow and orange because the sun is going down and we are watching the sunset."

Iggy could feel her gently tapping into his mind. He didn't have the heart not to let her in.

"No no no. You have to think of it!"

He lifted his hand away, but she didn't let go. "Think of what?"

"The stars! The sunset!" Angel pressed his fingers back into the wax, but this time closer to the bottom right corner of the page. "And the snowman!"

Iggy was startled into a laugh. He suddenly remembered the moment she had drawn. It was a few months ago, while there was still snow covering everything. They had spent the day outside, practicing aim. (Chucking snowballs at each other.) And when they finished, everyone talked about how beautiful it had been. Iggy didn't realize they were talking about the sunset; he thought they were appreciating the spruce smell and the crisp air and the sound of laughter muffled by scarves and powder-soft snow. Because that's what he had experienced.

"No, the snowman's scarf is blue."

"What?"

"And there are more trees around it. Here, here, and here. See?" She didn't wait for an answer. "And Max's nose is bleeding because Fang hit her in the face with an ice ball on accident. No, not that much blood. Just a little bit."

That's when Iggy realized Angel was _reading his mind_ to see what he was seeing. And she was editing it as she went.

"And Nudge's wings are white because she was doing snow angels and wanted to be off-and-tick. No, the sky is more red than that. There are fluffy clouds everywhere. I drew them yellow because white wouldn't show up. No, poofier. Yeah, like that. And Max and Fang are holding hands because they are best friends. Oh! And here's my pink marshmallow coat. . . "

First, Iggy let his eyes drift shut. Then he leaned against the couch behind him. Then he smiled.

**~Two Weeks Later~**

"Angel? Where are you going?" Jeb stopped the toddler in the hallway. It was too early for her to be up.

She waved a stack of papers at him and beamed. "I drew pictures for Iggy. I want to show them to him."

Jeb's brow creased. "It's too early. You should be in bed." She pouted as he scooped her up. He continued as he made his way back to her room. "And do you remember what I told you about Iggy?" She nodded against his shoulder. "This is one of those things that may hurt his feelings."

She sat back so she could look at him. "No, it doesn't. It makes him happy."

Jeb paused in the middle of lowering her into bed. "You've done this before?" He wondered why Iggy hadn't brought it up last time they talked. Was it really so bad?

Angel huffed. "No!" Jeb put a finger to his lips and pointed at the neighboring bed. Luckily for them both, Nudge was a very heavy sleeper. Jeb turned to leave, but Angel caught his shirt. "It makes him happy! He likes my drawings."

Jeb sighed and sat on the edge of her bed. He took the stack of papers from her and flipped through them briefly. Despite the girl's intelligence, her drawings were that of a typical two-year-old: indecipherable scribbles. "Angel, these are good, and I'm sure that Iggy likes when you make things for him and spend time with him. But Iggy is blind. He can't see your pictures."

She blinked sleepily at him with impossibly intelligent eyes. "No." She burrowed down into her covers. Jeb pushed her hair behind her ear and stood off the bed. As he was leaving, he barely made out her mumble.

"He sees them better than everyone else."


End file.
